Look at that one!

I was never much for dressing up in costumes, a social talent which is pretty much mandatory in San Francisco. For years I felt guilty and stupid that I wasn't able to get in the swing of things and have fun, but I finally decided, fuck it, I just don't like to. I don't like to play golf, do automobile maintenance, or get drunk either, and I can safely choose not to do those things without suffering people's disapproval. Finally, I have reached an age where no one is pressuring me to go to a costume party, thank goodness.

But that's not to say that a gathering of thousands of queers, all in fabulous costumes, is not a splendid sight. It's just that the huge Halloween street party in the Castro District got way out of control about 12 years ago, and now the crowd is at least 80% straight and 75% non-costumed. The adjective generally used to describe last night's event is "shoulder-to-shoulder," and frankly, I'm too old for that, too.

This year, I was able to witness a smidgen of it without getting my toes stepped on or witnessing much drunken behavior. My elderly mother and her husband came through town, and we had dinner at a hotel on Market St. where the dining room windows looked directly out onto the sidewalk. Scores of costumed people streamed past, a real treat for the senior citizens. My mother's husband Tom actually pointed out the window and cried, "Gladys, look at that one!" -- not once but several times. After about two hundred people had gone past, they were sufficiently puzzled to ask what was going on, and I told them there was a huge street party every year -- more than a mile away. They were amused and very surprised that so many adults actually go to the trouble. I told them that things like this were the reason a lot of people are in San Francisco in the first place, and with the evidence in front of them, they seemed to understand at least a little.

Of course it's utterly impossible for anyone in their 80s who did not spend their lives someplace like Greenwich Village to understand modern urban culture, much less queer culture. My mother lived a particularly sheltered life in the Midwest, with a blissful ignorance of events in pop culture. The most mainstream stuff failed to penetrate her awareness. About ten years ago, we went to see a touring production of "A Chorus Line," which features a song, "Dance Ten, Looks Three," in which the phrase "tits and ass" is repeated several times. Vulgarities such as these utterly shocked my mother, even though the musical itself had come out approximately 20 years before -- she had had no idea of the depths to which American culture had sunk.